Writer /actor Chris Pitman has created a powerful story with his one-person show, Shore Break. It is a fictional story about a solitary figure, unable to connect, abandoned at the edge of the world. It’s a combined snapshot of the older men living in remote campgrounds and their isolated existences. Director Chelsea Griffith has helped shape the story into one that blurs the edges of the personal scripts that we develop with others in our world, our parents, teachers, friends, neighbours and lovers.
A spartan setting in the intimate Space Theatre contains little more than a towel draped over a camp chair, a surfboard and odd dietrus of camping life. Chris enters, sits down, picks up his board and recites a poem. A poem that his English teacher made him learn and one that holds a fascination with him. He’s caught between the desert and the ocean. Alone and resigned to waiting out his time on earth.
It’s like when you’re sitting around a campfire, and someone tells you their life story. We hear amusing anecdotes about his early life. The drunken father who never quite knew how to connect to his son, but one day dragged an oversized wooden surfboard home for him. His mother who managed to keep the peace at home. His unsuccessful approaches with the opposite sex. His friendship with a fellow outcast student that turned sour. A brief love affair that similarly ended.
All of these chapters are told in in a raw, honest, and insightful way. He finds true happiness in the lure of the ocean, surfing and the lifestyle. Which also has a way of turning against him. The emotional honesty is balanced with self-deprecating humour and as we listen, it’s with a feeling of inevitability that life has a sting in its tail at every opportunity. Yet, the hardships do little to quench his ideals, only to harden his resolve to wait his time out.
There were many examples of some of the difficulties that young men in particular go through, if they don’t fit the mold of either the sports jock or intellectual. The stories were uncomfortably familiar to many in the audience. Although resources are probably more common to help those with mental health needs, the stories come from a period where these problems were dismissed and swept under the carpet. Leading to an epidemic of men who are left on the edges of society.
Shore Break is a powerful and captivating story of humanity and life that perfectly balances humour and tragedy. A story of one man, it resonates through the Australian male psyche. It’s a story that sits with you long after the lights go down.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Shore Break by Chris Pitman has a limited run at the Adelaide Festival Centre Space Theatre
Get 2-4-1 tickets here until Saturday 7th September using the code HOME241.
